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U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

High opacity white plumes from coal-fired and oil-fired sources

Conference ·
OSTI ID:7050606
 [1]
  1. National Cheng Kung Univ. (TW)
In recent years, with the installation of high efficiency particulate emission control devices on utility and industrial boilers, high-opacity white plumes have become more of a problem because formerly the emissions of primary particulate matter obscured and/or served as a condensing surface for the condensable material. The problem common to some of these installations is the violation of opacity standards due to the presence of a high-opacity persistent plume that emits from the stack. Oil fired boilers violating opacity standards typically comply with mass emission standards while coal fired boilers typically violate visual emission standards when simultaneously violating mass emission standards. The investigation reported here focuses on the atypical case when in-situ transmissometer measurements show compliance but plume opacity as measured by Reference Method 9 or LIDAR exceeds opacity standards. This case comes about due to gas phase reactions that produce fine aerosols, vapor phase condensation and physical agglomeration of sub-micron sized clusters and particles. The plume opacity control technology applicable to these aerosols which are created and/or grown in white plume is discussed in this paper.
OSTI ID:
7050606
Report Number(s):
CONF-880679--
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English